University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

An investigation of emotive expulsion

(USC Thesis Other)

An investigation of emotive expulsion

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

An Investigation of Emotive Expulsion

By Sofía Londoño

A Thesis Presented to the

Faculty of the USC Roski School of Art and Design

University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Master of Fine Art

May 2016

Copyright 2015 Sofía Londoño

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for their academic support and influences.

Tala Madani
A.L. Steiner
MFA student body 2013-2015

ii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………… ii
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….. iv
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 1
Function of tears………………………………………………………………………. 2

Assorted Tears…………………………………………………………………………. 5

Experts on Emotion……………………………………………………………………..7

Plañideras, the Office. ………………………………………………………………….8

First Actresses and Contemporary Criers …………………………………………….. 11

Colombia ………………………………………………………………………………14

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………17

iii

Abstract

This paper is an investigation of bodily fluids that mutate in their symbolic power, such
as tears; and a proposal for the potential in borrowing and excreting someone else’s
emotion.

iv

Tears are the only bodily fluid that doesn’t offend others.

Michael Trimble.

Introduction

The professional mourner, also called a moirologist, is a historical occupation
performed by women who have traditionally played a therapeutic role in society traced to
ancient Greece. Moirologists introduce female lament as a service, as well as
manifestation of individual and collective pain, and use it as a vehicle for uniting women
through social bonding, solidarity and empathy in a community.
2

Tears produced by these women are exemplary of fluid that mutates in its
symbolic power. Traditionally, weepers are hired to cry at wakes and funerals, but the
process through which this type of action takes place and the way in which it assists
different needs at distinct moments in history have changed and adapted according to
sociocultural mores.
3
I will be presenting an examination of the physical and historical
composition of tears and of several cultural instances in which the role of the mourner is
present. I argue that the presence of mourner allows for the complete disintegration of

2
Gamliel, Tova. "Performed Weeping: Drama and Emotional Management in Women's
Wailing." TDR: The Drama Review 54, no. 2 (2010): 70-90.
3
Ibid

1

predetermined social and political structures of leadership and results in a fruitful
environment for nontraditional leaders to emerge. Such leaders could ostensibly bring a
community together in performative ways that fall outside normative pathways of political
and religious administration, and foreground the practice of empathy and the
embodiment of others’ emotion.

Function of Tears

Michael Trimble, a British professor at the Institute of Neurology in London and
author of the book “Crying: The Mystery of Tears,” explains that crying triggered by
emotion assists the body in getting rid of potentially harmful stress-induced chemicals.
Trimble notes: “Crying is an exocrine process. That is a process in which a substance
comes out of the body. Other exocrine processes, like exhaling, urinating, defecating, and
sweating, release toxic substances from the body. There’s every reason to think that
crying does the same, releasing chemicals that the body produces in response to stress.”
4

The biological function of tears is to make the eyes moist and keep them healthy,
containing proteins and antibiotics that prevent irritation or infection. Michael Trimble
arrives at the conclusion that human beings are the only species that cry emotionally.
Animals have profound emotions who also mourn, but conceivably not with tears. We
weep at tragedies in our lives and in those of others, as when a friend tells us a
compelling story, and perhaps more strikingly, even when we know the characters in
film, music, literature, theatre are fictional.

4
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/31/science/biological-role-of-emotional-tears-
emerges-through-recent-studies.html
2

Trimble believes that the development of self-consciousness occurred when small
social communities began to develop language. To be self-conscious, you need the “I,”
and to have “I” you need to realize it is “here and now.”
5
With this notion, people began
to understand that others in their small community died and disappeared. They began to
try to connect to those who were gone. This coincides with not only the development of
early religious ceremonies,
6
but also the development of crying as an emotional signal.
Trimble proposes that group crying may have been an important aspect of these
ceremonies and that it is, in fact, still an important feature of wake and funerary services
today. His speculation is that bereavement originated the development of emotional tears
that we still experience today.
7

Laughing and crying are not opposite spectrums of a binary. The emotion that
accompanies both laughing and crying interferes with the ability to speak. One chokes,
and “bursts” into both—sometimes even simultaneously. Both are difficult to contain, one
laughs so hard that tears stream from the eyes. Many times, a long exhausting crying
episode finishes with calmed laughs of acceptance. Crying begins in the guts, a braiding
of the intestine that finds its way to the eyes. Heavy breathing, the muscles around the
eyes contract, and the throat becomes dry; this triggers a reflex from the central nervous
system, back to the lachrymal glands with an increased output of tears.
8
When we laugh,
the feelings are very often over as soon as the laughing finishes. Crying, inversely, may

5
Trimble, Michael. Why Humans Like to Cry: Tragedy, Evolution and the Brain. Oxford:
Oxford University, 2012.
6
Ibid.
7
Trimble, Michael. "Why Do Humans Cry? Scientist Says Tears Served as a Means of
Communication Before the Evolution of Language." Medical Daily. February 1, 2013.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-do-humans-cry-scientist-says-tears-served-means-
communication-evolution-language-244413.
8
Ibid.

3

supply a steady dose of calmness, which lasts much longer. Humans often cannot prevent
tears or laughter. Trying not to laugh, teeth might bite the inside of the cheeks, and eye
contact must be avoided at all costs. When attempting to avoid crying, biting of the
tongue and breathing as deeply as possible through the nose may deter the impulse,
inflating the stomach slowly in an effort of reversal, as well as blinking faster.
When abusing artificial tears, sometimes the drops find their way from the eye to
the throat. They have a different taste to real ones. What if there was a similar process of
reversal for natural tears? That somehow they could be redirected to come back inside so
you could swallow them. Between the stomach and the esophagus, there is around 1 litter
of capacity if both were empty. The intestine, at approximately 650 cm of length and 4
cm of diameter, could hold around 4000 cm3, so approximately 4 or 5 extra liters.
Combined, and assuming that there is substantial training of holding that gagging reflex,
there is a possibility of reverse crying and swallowing 7 liters of tears before
physiological bursting would transpire. It would be hard to reach toxicity levels with
tears since they are probably the least toxic substance that exists—far less toxic than
clean, purified water because they contain ions and proteins, and their acidity is already
aligned with the human body.
A majority of people feel better after crying. This idea of feeling better, or of
releasing catharsis, is Aristotelian, going back to the theater of tragedy. In contemporary
presentations of tragedy, as in an opera or a film, it is not unusual to shed emotional
tears. What’s more, this feeling is exacerbated even more so if the scene is accompanied
by a compelling piece of music. The cathartic element highlights the idea of mourners as
actresses that I will discuss later.
4

Assorted Tears
There are three kinds of tears: basal tears are the ones that are always present and
keep our eyes from drying out; reflex tears aid our eyes when we enter a smoky room,
when we are chopping onions, using bleach or when an eyelash gets in there; and
emotional tears are shed when we are feeling emotional. This includes a wide range of
emotions, such as happiness, sadness, stress, rage, frustration, defeat, etc. Physical pain
could be included, as well. If one examines all the various kinds of tears under a
microscope, they all appear different. Emotional tears have a higher concentration of
hormones, specifically stress hormones like prolactin and ACTH. Leaky hormones are a
beautiful idea – suggesting that our lacrimal glands have a neural connection to the limbic
system of the brain, which processes emotional information.
9

Evolutionary psychologists think that tears might have evolved to be a strong
emotional cue, meaning they have a role in communication. It signals to others that you
are upset, in pain, or need help. To feel what someone else is feeling. Before we
developed language, those who cried and felt empathy when others cried may have had
an evolutionary advantage.
10
Perhaps criers bonded the group, helped build communities
and social support (such is the case of the mourners). And because tears aren’t easy to see
from far away, they may have evolved to tell your friends or the people closer to you in
your community that you are in need, but not your enemies.

9
Brody, Jane E. "Biological Role of Emotional Tears Emerges Through Recent Studies."
New York Times. August 31, 1982. Accessed March 11, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/31/science/biological-role-of-emotional-tears-emerges-
through-recent-studies.html.
10
Frey, William H. Crying: The Mystery of Tears. Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985.

5

We wouldn’t want them to know we are vulnerable.
11
The ability to feel compassion,
the embodiment of which relates to our capacity for empathy, is triggered by what the
neurologist Antonio Damasio

refers to as emotionally competent stimuli. The responses
are automatic, unconscious and bound in with our personal memories. Seeing facial
expressions of sadness trigger the neuronal circuits related to theory of mind and
empathy, which to some extent overlap, and involve, in part, those brain areas that give
us our visceral, emotional feelings noted above.
12
Emotional tears resolve ambiguity for
us and define the situation for a spectator.
Crying is regarded not only as a psychobiological process with certain effects on
the physical and mental well-being of the crying person, but also as a process which has
a strong impact on the social environment.
Tears manifest the physical involvement that occurs when a subjective experience
crosses a certain level of intensity. We have been accustomed to regard tears as reliable
evidence that people truly feel the emotion that they say they are feeling. Although one
can fake emotion by forcing tears to flow, it is usually hard to do. Since infants and
young children universally respond to unpleasant stimuli by crying, one assumes that
weeping in the midst of mourning reflects authentic emotions or an attempt to signal the
experiencing of such emotions.

11
Ibid.
12
Cook, Gareth. "Why Humans Like to Cry." Scientific American. January 29, 2013.

Accessed April 19, 2015. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-humans-like-to-
cry/.

6

Expulsed interior. Excretion. Purging.
13

Experts on Emotion

Tova Gamliel is a lecturer in the department of sociology and anthropology at the
Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Her fields of study include the anthropology of emotions,
aging and death, anthropology of theater and performance and integrational relationships.
Gamiel investigates wailing cultures and focuses on elderly Yemenite Jewish women,
observing that most often, the office of a wailing woman was associated with older
women, meaning a woman who had seen enough in life, and who had perhaps
experienced loss herself, which then qualified her to lead the community in wailing.
Gamiel’s insights into this culture present the office of these women as key
examples of women’s power and creativity: transforming the wailing women from a
state of invisibility to a position of vivacity, authority, and significance. What she
proposes is a transformation from a woman-as-object to a woman-as-subject, whose
actions have powerful effects in a community in crisis.
15

13

The last time I felt I was purging was during a Sexaholics meeting that I attended a couple of
months ago, not expecting to cry but did. Like a baby. I was the only woman. Twenty men. I
think I was also the only non-North American, or at least the only one with an accent. I
wondered if I could buy tears. Or if I could make them. If I start with Pedialite, I would be
approximately 99% closer to their composition. The hormones and proteins would be extremely
hard to get, though. I’ve seen that people make salt from tears. They make cheese too. Who
would want to digest someone else’s pain and sorrow? Maybe me. That’s how I felt with these
men. They deposit all of their shame on me and I cried it out for them. I cried a tremendous
amount of tears. I would’ve guaranteed someone’s passage to the afterlife to be smooth. I don’t
know if you can just buy tears. And if you can make cheese from tears does it mean you can
extract tears from cheese?

14

Gamliel, Tova. "Performance versus Social Invisibility: What Can Be Learned from
the Wailing Culture of Old-age Yemenite–Jewish Women?" Women's Studies International Forum
31, no. 3 (2008): 209-18.
7

Sociology defines expertise as something that is acquired by experience and
constitutes a social functioning that exerts a recognized influence.
15
Having a high level
of a domain’s specified knowledge perhaps required a deserved remuneration. Many
remunerate for the psychotherapist’s work, so it should make sense to remunerate a
mourner, whose profession requires training, preparation, warm up, performance, cooling

off, and aftermath.

Plañideras, the Office

Wailing women learn their craft of wailing in so-called “houses of mourning,”
where they observe experienced wailing women. The laments represent a community’s
response to trauma; alternatively, mothers or neighbors often teach young women the
craft. Tova Gamiel describes the art of wailing as, "cumulative knowledge that is
transmitted successfully in two phases," which she calls "storage" and "incubation."
16
She

argues that women store and acquire knowledge so that it may incubate inside them until
the right moment of "retrieval" from memory, i.e, "the performance."
16

My first encounter with the office of a mourner was through anecdotes told by my
mother from Monteria, Colombia, the town where she grew up. In Latin America the
custom of hiring mourners started around the 17
th
century. Mourners hired by villagers in
Colombia’s Caribbean coast are called plañideras. They weren’t present in

15
Gamliel, Tova. "Performed Weeping: Drama and Emotional Management in Women's
Wailing." TDR: The Drama Review 54, no. 2 (2010): 70-90. Accessed April 20, 2015.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tdr/summary/v054/54.2.gamliel.html.
6616
16
Claassens, Juliana M. "Calling the Keeners: The Image of the Wailing Woman As
Symbol of Survival in a Traumatized World." Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26,
no. 1right (2010): 63-77.
17
Ibid

8

big cities, only in the towns along the coast. Later, I encountered them again in

Colombian literature that also mentions their existence.

Plañideras are a crucial role in community bonding and highlight the importance
of emotional release. They perform the role of a rescuer by defining reality for victims
and their family members and attempt to affect their emotions for the better. Interpersonal
emotional management is important for social exchange of emotional resources. Their job
evokes outbursts of crying among people who ordinarily repress themselves. This reading
of plañideras elevates wailing to being a community service.
What if wailing was part of life? Wayne Koestenabum talks about a similar
formulation in his book Humiliation: “Imagine a society in which humiliation is essential
— as a rite of passage, as a passport to decency and civilization, as a necessary shedding
of hubris.”
19
Borrowing from Kostenbaum’s idea of rite of passage, I would exchange a
humiliating event for a wailing one—not necessarily applied as the culture rule that one
should cry over the dead, but instead as a practice of empathy. Of embodying someone
else’s emotions. In her performance, the wailer "translates" into expressive strategies that
aim to manage the emotions of others by mimicking culturally conditioned enunciations
of sadness and pain. This is a matter of representation, or more specifically, embodied
representation. What if, instead of “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” you could
“cry someone else’s tears?”
Plañideras fulfill an important therapeutic role in society. Helping survivors deal
with trauma of their lives in cultures that have lived under terror, by moving trauma from

19
Koestenbaum, Wayne. Humiliation. New York: Picador, 2011. 3.

9

the hidden spheres of silence. An appropriate and perhaps obvious response to the terror
all around is to raise one's voice in weeping and wailing. Part of their therapeutic role is
the recuperation of trust. Trusting your feelings onto someone else to represent them for
you. It is an investment on an external social protocol with internal validation.
For Tova Gamliel, the performance of the wailing women created a fused
audience of consolers. The distinction between them and their audience is blurred,
resulting in a symbiotic relationship
20
that underscores the ability of weeping to construct
community as a coping strategy to make some sort of sense of the devastation all
around. She also talks about two categories by which to understand the wailing women,
the categories of witness and testimony.
21
The witness is the survivor who is left behind,
tormented and bruised, yet who is still able to stand up and speak on behalf of others. The
tears and the laments could be understood as a testimony of what has transpired, calling
to the rest of the community not to forget but to honestly and bravely name the pain; thus
the wailing women also play an important role in helping people participate in the
"survival of the[ir] story,” the memory of a community. Their laments serve as memory
and oral history of loss and tragedy. Without the wailing women, victims of violent
attacks would fall into oblivion.
Plañideras can also be proposed as an act of resistance. The impact or the value of
such simple acts such as weeping should not be underestimated. If resistance is defined
only as armed resistance or organized group opposition, then the minuscule daily acts of

20
Tova Gamiel “Performane versus Social Invisibility” 209

21
Claassens, Juliana M. "Calling the Keeners” 71

10

maintaining physical survival, self-respect and human and spiritual bonds will be
overlooked. Though by this simple gesture of wailing these tears became a sign for hope,
fostering the broader community's will to survive.
22

The image of the wailing women offers an example of female agency, of women
stepping forward and taking the lead in helping communities deal with trauma and grief.
Women that mobilize communities could by this formulation are associated with a passion
for justice. It is this passion that makes them identify with the exploited, that motivates
them and empowers them to rectify wrong, to fight for justice. In “Performance versus
Social Invisibility,” Tova Gamliel argues that the action of wailing women allows the
community to view elderly women as subjects in their own right. Supporting the notion of
"empowerment and agency in old age."
23

First Actresses and Contemporary Criers

Plañideras, wailing women, moirologists, and weepers could very well be
considered the first actors. There's a primordial, dramaturgical element in what they do,
which places the wailer at the center of attention. The performance includes a way of
managing the anguish in a deliberate and planned manner. One could consider the wailer
a method actor in that she adopts a strategy of surface acting and deep acting; improvises
and expends personal resources to achieve verisimilitude; and adjusts her acting to the
cultural typifications that she and her audience share.

22
Ibid
23
Gamliel, Tova. "Performance versus Social Invisibility” 217

11

Technique actors are used to create in themselves the thoughts and feelings of their
characters, so as to develop lifelike performances. They emphasize the practice of
connecting to a character by drawing on personal emotions and memories, aided by a set
of exercises and practices, which include sensed memory and affective memory.
The nature of the emotionality inherent to the structure of death rituals can
provoke a debate of emotional authenticity when regarded as sincerity. The plañideras’
job of expressing feelings of sorrow falls into the representational, rather than the actual,
which touches upon the difference between sincerity and enactment. However, in terms
of mere communication, their function becomes more definite. Before the advent of the
postal system for instance, one’s death could be communicated orally by loud wailing.
Wailing women also resemble singers in a tragic opera who wish to perform a lengthy
aria before they fall silent. Tears then, could be an unequivocal confirmation of the
wailer's performing talent. The question of emotional sincerity during the performance
establishes a complex relationship between wailer and audience and has the power to
transform affect to into meta affect. Another contribution to the proposal of
plañideras as actresses is the idea of catharsis. Again, this Aristotelian idea dates back to

the origination of the theater of tragedy.

In April 2013, Time magazine published and article titled, “Want To Look More
Popular? Rent-A-Mourner Will Send People to Your Funeral.” Rent-A-Mourner is a U.K.
based company that will send “professional, polite, well dressed and discreet
individuals”
24
to your funeral and weep for about two hours for $68 a head.

12

This is, of course, a product social media and today’s market economy. According to
their website
25
, they are “typically invited to help increase visitors to funerals where
there may be a low turnout expected.” One can only conclude that perhaps the deceased
burnt too many bridges in life. The professional mourners can attend the full church or
crematorium service, both the funeral and wake, or just the wake if required. To help the
grievers do an excellent job, the actors are educated about the life of the deceased so that
they can talk to other funeral-goers confidently as if they had been friends.
26
These kind
of businesses perhaps help de-romanticize non-western mourning rituals by undermining
the semi-magical enchantment of the performance and turning it into a transaction.
Another example of contemporary iterations of the embodiment of someone else’s
pain could be Miranda July’s app “Somebody.” In August 2014, July released an app that
essentially functions as instant messaging service. Instead of the sender’s message
instantly reaching the device of its recipient, however, it is sent to a Somebody app user
nearby, who then delivers the message in person, complete with stage directions so they
know how to deliver it. The app offers the option of have the message delivered crying,
nervously, laughing, confidently, etc.
27

24
Locker, Melissa. "Want To Look More Popular? Rent-A-Mourner Will Send People to

Your Funeral." TIME, April 4, 2013. http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/04/want-to-look-
more-popular-rent-a-mourner-will-send-people-to-your-funeral/
25
"Rent a Mourner." Www.rentamourner.co.uk. 2013. Accessed April 16, 2015.

http://www.rentamourner.co.uk.

26
Ibid
27
July, Miranda. Somebody. January 1, 2014. Accessed April 22, 2015.

http://somebodyapp.com.

13

Colombia
Professional mourners contribute to the grieving of the deaths that come too early
and too often, and that frequently are the product of the country’s seemingly endless
violence. In very simplified and condensed terms, Colombia’s ruthless armed conflict
dates back to 1920, sparked by agrarian disputes in the Sumapaz and Tequendama
regions. Peasants fought over ownership of coffee farms, which caused the liberal and
conservative parties to take extreme positions. It was in 1948, with the assassination of
populist leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, that the conflict between the parties took a bloody
turn, which led to an urban riot resulting in the death of 4,000 people; subsequently, this
led to ten years of consistent rural warfare between members of both parties, a decade
known as La Violencia ("The Violence"), which took the lives of another 200,000 people
throughout the countryside. If Colombia were a historical character, La Violencia could
perhaps be its nickname. She would be a charming cannibal.
28

28
It would be an extremely difficult and exhausting task to name all the catastrophes that
occurred in Colombia due to violence, so instead I will just list some of the ones most present in
my memory: The siege of the Palace of Justice, where members of the M-19
guerrilla group took 300 people hostage which included 24 justices and 20 other judges.
More than 100 people died, including half of the 25 Supreme Court justices. The
bombing of Avianca Airlines flight 203, where all 107 people on board were killed. Pablo
Escobar planned the bombing hoping to kill presidential candidate Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, who
was actually not on board. Bombing of DAS Hearqurtes (Administrative Department of Security)
by the cartel de Medellin. The explosion left 49 dead, 600 wounded and hundreds of retail outlets
completely destroyed. The bombing of the building of El Espectador, the oldest National
Newspaper which had been a leading and determined critic of the drug cartels. The assassination
of liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan and Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla.
Not to mention the hundreds of daily kidnaps and disappearances. In the 1980’s, Colombia was
considered the most violent country in the world due to a devastating civil war, set off by the
multiple and ever- growing drug cartels. Since the start of La Violencia, Colombia has been at war
for a total of 67 years: both left- and right-wing leaders share responsibility for tens-of-thousands
of violent deaths, disappearances and massacres of hundreds of civilians.

14

Having grown up in a country with such turbulent political climate leads me to
find the notion of the wailing woman to be a powerful symbol of strength and survival in
a traumatized society. I find the potential of their office to be compelling and certainly
cathartic. It aids the survival of an injured people seeking to cope with the tragedy that
has befallen them, who—on micro and macro levels—may experience the world as
falling apart; and in some instances, it quite literally had. Plañideras services can be
extended from funerary services to people who themselves are facing personal or
corporal trauma, or who live in terror-ridden times.
Plañideras in Colombia are not related to the family of hire and have no
emotional connection to the deceased. Their only job is to cry as many tears as possible
to guarantee a successful, easier, and faster passage of the person’s soul to a peaceful
afterlife. In this case, tears have been dislocated from being a response to becoming an
emotional state in humans, and instrumentalized as productive and useful. They escape
their relational social system to enter another, becoming vessels with purgatorial and
cleansing properties; their function becomes as fluid as their constitution. If weepers told
the history of humanity, Colombia’s chapter would contain those 100 Years of Solitude,
29

an unending stream of tears that would carry resistance, and most importantly, solidarity
within them. This bodily fluid unfortunately doesn’t have the ability to redeem any of the
recurrent catastrophic events, but one might propose that it contributes to the dignity of a
human life. One drop at a time.
This idea of “one drop at a time” and unending relates to another one of Colombian author
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories, “Your Trail of Blood in the Snow.” This story narrates

29
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a 1967 novel by Colombian author, Gabriel García
Márquez.
15

the tragic death of Nena Daconte, a very young, pregnant newlywed who finds herself
in France for her honeymoon. She cuts her ring finger with a thorn from a rose. The
cut is almost imperceptible but deadly, since it doesn’t stop bleeding until she dies.
The story narrates how mysteriously a subject could disappear into the bureaucratic
clutches of an institution without hardly any notice.
Two books by Garcia Marquez that have the presence of plañideras are “Big
Mama’s Funeral,” which tells the story of the death and funeral of Big Mama, the
fantastical events of her life and the days preceding and proceeding her death. The
immaterial possessions of her will include territorial waters, the colors of the flag, and the
rights of man. Marquez’s second book is “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” which is a non-
linear story of the murder of Santiago Nazar.
“When the sun let up, two men from the town government brought
Bayardo San Román down in a hammock hanging from a pole, wrapped up
to his neck in a blanket and with a retinue of waling women. Magdalena
Oliver thought he was dead. “Collons de déu ” she exclaimed. “What a
waste.”
30

30
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1983. 85-86.
16

Bibliography

Brody, Jane E. "Biological Role of Emotional Tears Emerges Through Recent Studies."
New York Times. August 31, 1982. Accessed March 11, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/31/science/biological-role-of-emotional-tears-emerges-
through-recent-studies.html.

Caraveli-Chaves, Anna. "Bridge between Worlds: The Greek Women's Lament as
Communicative Event." The Journal of American Folklore 93, no. 368 (1980): 129-57.
Accessed April 19, 2015.
www.jstor.org/stable/541009

Claassens, Juliana M. "Calling the Keeners: The Image of the Wailing Woman As
Symbol of Survival in a Traumatized World." Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26,
no. 1 (2010): 63-77. Accessed April 10, 2015.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/FSR.2010.26.1.63.

Cook, Gareth. "Why Humans Like to Cry." Scientific American. January 29, 2013.
Accessed April 19, 2015. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-humans-like-to-
cry/.

Doyle, Jennifer, and David Getsy. "Queer Formalisms: Jennifer Doyle and David Getsy
in Conversation." Art Journal 72, no. 4 (2013): 58-71.

Frey, William H. Crying: The Mystery of Tears. Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985.

Gamliel, Tova. "Performance versus Social Invisibility: What Can Be Learned from the
Wailing Culture of Old-age Yemenite–Jewish Women?" Women's Studies International
Forum 31, no. 3 (2008): 209-18. Accessed April 21, 2015.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539508000319.

17

Gamliel, Tova. "Performed Weeping: Drama and Emotional Management in Women's
Wailing." TDR: The Drama Review 54, no. 2 (2010): 70-90. Accessed April 20, 2015.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tdr/summary/v054/54.2.gamliel.html.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1983. 85-86.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Los Funerales De La Mamá Grande. Xalapa: Universidad

Veracruzana, 1962.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Doce Cuentos Peregrinos. Buenos Aires: Editoriar Suramerica,

1962

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper Perennial,

1998.

July, Miranda. Somebody. January 1, 2014. Accessed April 22, 2015.
http://somebodyapp.com.

Koestenbaum, Wayne. Humiliation. New York: Picador, 2011. 3.

Locker, Melissa. "Want To Look More Popular? Rent-A-Mourner Will Send People to
Your Funeral." TIME, April 4, 2013. http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/04/want-to-look-
more-popular-rent-a-mourner-will-send-people-to-your-funeral/

Lutz, Tom. Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears. New York: W.W. Norton

& Company, 1999.

Trimble, Michael. Why Humans Like to Cry: Tragedy, Evolution and the Brain. Oxford:
Oxford University, 2012.

18

Trimble, Michael. "Why Do Humans Cry? Scientist Says Tears Served as a Means of
Communication Before the Evolution of Language." Medical Daily. February 1, 2013.
Accessed April 27, 2015. http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-do-humans-cry-scientist-
says-tears-served-means-communication-evolution-language-244413.

Vingerhoets, Ad. Why Only Humans Weep. Oxford: Oxford University, 2013.

"Rent a Mourner." Www.rentamourner.co.uk. 2013. Accessed April 16, 2015.
http://www.rentamourner.co.uk.

19

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This paper is an investigation of bodily fluids that mutate in their symbolic power, such as tears

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

The unsound: a paradox of the history of the technology of sound visualization

PDF

The open body

PDF

Re/locating new media in the museum

PDF

Soft walls / hard spaces: an(other) narrative for Eileen Gray’s E.1027

PDF

Gaps of knowledge

PDF

Art as a political tool: the early feminist production of Mónica Mayer, 1976–1984

PDF

Light and space as experience: a study of the work of James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, and perceptual phenomenology

PDF

Sustainability through participation: public art projects by Fritz Haeg, Futurefarmers, and Fallen Fruit

PDF

Who are worth our love

PDF

Soft openings

PDF

The crying project: understanding emotions through an investigative eye

PDF

Staring at Long Beach's oil islands

PDF

Ghostly becoming

PDF

Revisions: an exploration of metafiction and metaphors in game design

PDF

Post modern UI/UX, an anti-design manifesto for 21st century

PDF

Museum programming and the educational turn

PDF

Public engagement and activating audiences in Los Angeles museums

PDF

The art of staying: Theaster Gates and the Rebuild Foundation

PDF

Performativity of sites of commemoration and performativity at sites of commemoration

PDF

The plausible, ongoing, and disappearing acts of James Lee Byars: early performance works (1955-1967)

Asset Metadata

Creator Londoño, Sofia (author)

Core Title An investigation of emotive expulsion

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publication Date 04/22/2016

Defense Date 04/10/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,plañidera,tears

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Steiner, A. L. (committee chair), Jones, Amelia G. (committee member), Madani, Tala (committee member)

Creator Email londono@usc.edu,sofialondono@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-240837

Unique identifier UC11277082

Identifier etd-LondonoSof-4354.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-240837 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LondonoSof-4354.pdf

Dmrecord 240837

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Londoño, Sofia; Londono, Sofia

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA